Vials of the injectable steroid product made by New England Compounding Center implicated in a fungal meningitis outbreak. / AP / File

Written by

Walter F. Roche Jr.

The Tennessean

A 24-year-old Montgomery County man had to be evacuated from his military post overseas after being stricken with fungal meningitis from a spinal steroid treatment he had undergone in Nashville.

Those and other details about Joshua Kirkwood are spelled out in a 56-page complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court in Nashville. He becomes the third Tennessee victim of a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak to be identified for the first time this week.

“By the time Joshua Kirkwood was able to see an Army physician, his speech was slurred,” the complaint states.

Attorneys for Kirkwood declined to specify where he was stationed when he became ill, but the complaint says he was first evacuated to a military hospital in Germany and after four days of treatment airlifted to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.

He also underwent treatment at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Kirkwood, the suit states, went to the Howell Allen Clinic in August of last year with lower back pain stemming from an injury suffered four years earlier while on active duty. He was referred to the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center, where he was injected with methylprednislone acetate on Aug. 31.

Named as defendants in the suit are the individual owners of the New England Compounding Center, the now-shuttered company blamed by state and federal regulators for shipping fungus-tainted steroids to health facilities across the country. Other defendants include the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center and the Howell Allen Clinic, part owner of the outpatient center.

Kirkwood had already been deployed in mid-September when someone from the clinic left a message on his voice mail inquiring about how he was doing.

“No one told Mr. Kirkwood that he was at risk of contracting fungal meningitis,” according to the complaint.

In early October Kirkwood began to experience symptoms of fungal meningitis and his platoon leader, who had heard about the outbreak, “instructed him to see a medic.”

The soldier’s treatment included antifungal medications and surgery for an abscess at the site of his injection.

The suit seeks $7 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified amount in punitive damages.

Earlier this week, suits were filed for two other victims of the outbreak, Elfrieda Wiley of Gallatin and Wilma S. Carter of Crossville.

Like Kirkwood, Wiley was injected with spinal steroids at the Saint Thomas outpatient center, while Carter was treated at the Specialty Surgery Center in Crossville.

The latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that nationwide 750 patients have become ill in the outbreak and 63 have died, including 15 who were treated in Tennessee.